It’s been a bit since I last worked on this report. Here we go again! If you aren’t up to speed, the Great Divide Trail is a stunning thru-hike in BC and Alberta, Canada starting where the Continental Divide Trail ends in Glacier National Park, MT and proceeding north for 600 miles of the wild Canadian Rockies. We didn’t do the whole trail: we only tackled 120 miles of the middle of the trail – Section C – the part that is perhaps hardest to book, though maybe easiest to hike, due to the popular National and Provincial Park trails that are well maintained. To catch you up on our trip so far, read days 5-6 here and follow the links back to our beginning.

When last we left off, we had hiked 6 days and heavily modified our itinerary, adding a camp on the fly using our Garmin Inreach to get family to book a site for us, then using an optional site I had foreseen we might need to get a night in the astonishing Mount Assiniboine basin. But we made it to Banff on schedule!

The plan was to get a hot meal and sleep the night in Banff in a hotel, then hit the trail bright and early the next day up Healy Pass. Like so:

• Day 7 – Taxi up to Sunshine again, hike up Healy Pass, over Whistling Pass and camp at Ball Pass Camp (Banff) – probably 23km with two passes.
• Day 8 – Ball Pass Camp to Floe Lake (Kootenay National Park) – 21km with a brutally steep ascent to start and end the day.
• Day 9 – Floe Lake to Wolverine Pass – 20km over Numa Pass, Tumbling Pass, and Rockwall Pass.

But we didn’t do that.